Saturday, 24 June 2017

....I was a spectator at the Olympic swimming pool stadium watching the Olympic swimming finals which were being held in Nicaragua. Though it was a sweltering hot day in Central America I was wearing my red, white and blue Dundee Football Club scarf.In an interval between races a TV commentator carrying a microphone approached me speaking in English which seemed to have a slightly German undertone, "People from all over the world have been in touch with us about your scarf and want to know what it represents." With little hesitation I grabbed his microphone and loudly, proudly declaimed "This is the scarf of Dundee Football Club - the greatest football team of all time!"

The scarf of my dreams

Taking back his microphone he returned to his station to commentate on the next race. At the end of the race he approached me again saying, "Someone has contacted us to say that your Dundee team has just been beaten 5-0 by Arbroath. So your club is not the greatest!" I was struck dumb by this revelation, no words would come from my mouth and the spectators at the pool began to jeer me.My memory of the dream ends here though on waking I felt humiliated as if I had been exposed as a fraud. All this morning I have tried with little success to interpret my dream. I know for a fact that Dundee FC is the greatest football team of all time and I am certain the person who contacted the commentator about us losing to Arbroath must have been an Arab, i.e. a Dundee United supporter.Whatever it was about I hope the dream was not prescient for Dundee FC are playing Arbroath in a pre-season friendly match in two weeks time.

Friday, 2 June 2017

In 2014, though I was someone not entitled to vote in the Scottish referendum, I was a keen supporter of the YES for independence movement. Given what I'm about to write, I'd better make my position clear. In Scotland I would vote SNP until Scotland established its independence and thereafter I would vote for a Scottish Labour Party which accepted Scotland's independent status. Such was the tense nature of the referendum campaign and the disappointment of the YES supporters' relatively narrow defeat, I was so emotionally exhausted that I declared it would be my last campaign. I hadn't bargained for what was developing in the Labour Party. My political juices started to run again. I just couldn't seem to stop them.In 2015, during the campaign for the leadership of the Labour Party following Ed Milliband's resignation after the defeat for the Labour Party in the general election I became interested in the political ideas Jeremy Corbyn was putting forward. They were moderate ideas for the benefit all the people, in stark contrast to the extremity of the Conservative Party's support for a relatively small group of the overly rich. It was becoming clear that Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters were trying to re-establish the Labour Party as the party 'for the many, not the few'. I decided to re-join the party.Since then, like hundreds of thousands of people, many young people and many of my age, I have been giving support to the Labour Party campaign by trying to persuade people to vote Labour. As well as this, many not so well off individual people have been putting what money they can spare to keep the campaign nourished. It is a campaign energised by the people and not a few wealthy media moguls with narrow vested interests.

I draw further encouragement comparing the Labour Party's manifesto, a clear, concise, costed and common sensical document with the Conservative's vague, vapid and vacillating set of scribbled notes presented as its manifesto entitled - no doubt with unintended irony - Forward Together.Little as I have done to toward all that Corbyn and his team have achieved so far, I do think with all the sincere efforts of so many people - particularly young people - the Labour Party can win this election and if it does I can - without fear of misleading anyone again - promise this will definitely be my last campaign.

I am writing this on June 2nd and remembering it was on this day 64 years ago in 1953 we all got a day off school because the queen was being crowned. As an almost 8 years old boy I didn't know much about government and democracy. I suppose I thought the queen ruled us and Winston Churchill helped her. I've learned so much and so little about democracy and government since. Perhaps June 8th will be that start of a long leap forward.